CAIRO (Reuters) – Lebanon said on Wednesday two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbollah would not be released unless Israel was prepared to discuss a prisoner swap. The unconditional release of the soldiers, whose seizure by the Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla group in a cross-border raid on July 12 sparked a 34-day war, is called for in the preamble to a UN security council resolution that brought about a ceasefire.

The same preamble "encourages" the settling of the issue of Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel."Neither of the two Israeli soldiers will be released unless there are negotiations over the exchange of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners," Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh told reporters at an Arab foreign ministers’ meeting in Cairo.Hizbollah has two ministers in the Lebanese government.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Hizbollah’s continued detention of the soldiers violated the Security Council resolution, and that Lebanon must act to release them unconditionally."U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, on which the ceasefire is based, calls unequivocally for an unconditional and immediate release of the soldiers being held hostage," he said.

A remote-controlled bomb on Tuesday wounded a senior police intelligence officer who played a key role in the investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Security officials said four of the officer’s aides and bodyguards were killed and five others wounded in a sophisticated attack in south Lebanon. Lieutenant Colonel Samir Shehade, deputy chief of the intelligence department in Lebanon’s national police force, was taken to a hospital in the southern port city of Sidon. His condition was stable, hospital officials said.

Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat told the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation that the roadside bomb had been loaded with nails and had targeted a car normally driven by Shehade, who was traveling in a second vehicle at the time. The explosion occurred as Shehade’s two-vehicle police convoy drove by the village of Rmaile, which is located near Sidon. Fatfat did not say who might have been behind the attack, but said it could have been aimed at Lebanese security forces, who are deploying to south Lebanon under a UN-brokered cease-fire deal that ended a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas Aug. 14.

Lebanese Army troops are supposed to deploy in the south with a beefed-up UN peacekeeping force as Israeli troops withdraw. Shehade also was involved in the arrest last August of four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals in Lebanon. The four were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the February 2005 assassination of Hariri

Wed Sep 6, 8:37 AM ET, BEIRUT (AFP) – Two Lebanese soldiers working to clear the country’s south of unexploded ordnance were killed when a still-unidentified object blew up. The incident occurred in Aita al-Jabal, near Bint Jbeil, a day after Lebanese forces moved into the area near the Israeli border that was the scene […]

Israel agreed to lift its air and sea blockade on Lebanon on Thursday at 6 pm local time (1500 GMT) Thursday, a government statement announced. The decision came after guarantees from the United Nations and the United States that international troops would take up positions at the sea and air port in Beirut.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received the assurances from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the statement said. According to the statement, German experts are due to arrive with special equipment at the Beirut International Airport later Wednesday, while German naval forces are to patrol the Lebanese shores starting within an estimated two weeks. Until their arrival, the sea patrols will be carried out by Italian, French, British and Greek naval forces, the statement said.

The decision was the result of indirect negotiations between Israel and the Lebanese government under mediation by the US and UN, Israeli media reported. Earlier Wednesday, Israeli military sources admitted that Israel had not choice but to lift the sea and air blockade, because it had no means to enforce it. ‘We regret the fact, but we have no choice. We do not want to hit civilian planes,’ a military official told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa, when asked what Israel would do if civilian aircraft broke the air blockade.

BEIRUT (AFP) – Lebanese MPs have continued for a second day their round-the-clock protest at Israel’s continued blockade, almost three weeks after a UN-brokered ceasefire in its deadly onslaught against Hezbollah. Parliament speaker Nabih Berri took part in the protest along with two ministers and nine deputies, with similar size rotations expected to continue until the blockade is lifted, officials said.

Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallukh said Lebanon was taking steps to get the blockade lifted."The Israeli blockade is in violation of (UN Security Council) Resolution 1701, and we have taken steps to make sure it is lifted," Sallukh said according to the official ANI news agency."The sit-in is an important step toward helping the executive branch in its efforts to lift the blockade."Israel imposed a blanket air and sea blockade on Lebanon following the July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants, a blockade it has maintained despite the halt to hostilities on August 14 following the passage of Resolution 1701.

Source: WFP, Municipal workers have distributed food rations from the WFP to vulnerable families in Beirut